Hello parents/students, thanks for your help in advance. Working with our current fifth-grader son to decide the middle school(s) to apply. Our son has been super excited with early debater camps/programs in the past two years; not surprisingly, he put “must have a good debate team” on his search list.
Appreciate any insights on that topic, Milton/BBN/Rivers/Dexter/others missed from the list?
To help with the big picture, our son will be graduating from a pretty good public school. His academia should be decent (haven’t taken ISEE yet so no score to report) with good involvement in sports teams (but not travel team level). He is quite articulate which started to show in his writing too. He is a logical thinker at his age level. We (parents) do feel that he will benefit from a good debate team/program in middle school and high school too.
Any guidance and insights are much appreciated!
If your child’s academics are great, I highly suggest NOT attending prep middle schools you mentioned based on our experience at one of them. Kids will have more options and opportunities if they apply for 9th grade. At the school my kid attended, honor classes and spots at varsity sports were offered to kids joining from 9th grades and students from their own middle schools were left out of these opportunities. In fact, my kid had zero opportunity to talk to teachers and athletic coaches of her own high school while she was In the middle school. The school was too busy to entertain external applicants to keep them from competitions.
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Wow thanks for sharing the insight; never thought about it but agreed that it could be frustrating if a school would deprioritize its own kids to attract new applicants. Definitely a question to ask (politely) when we interview the schools. Many thanks indeed!
My suggestion is to ask these questions to Athletic Directors and Head of Science/English/Language/Math departments of high school, not Middle School or Admission Office staffs. The former group has less filter and honest answers while the latter has only nice things to say about the school.
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